“Shuttle Z-1 to Arcadia Control. We are all systems Go and awaiting clearance.”
“Arcadia Control to Shuttle Z-1. Other traffic is being held. You have clearance for takeoff and bearing zero-niner to space.”
“Shuttle Z-1 to Arcadia Control. Roger clearance for takeoff and bearing zero-niner to space.”
“We ready?” Justin Moore asked his co-pilot.
“We’re as ready as we’re gonna get,” Gavin MacKay said.
Moore nodded to MacKay, and the co-pilot began spooling up the massive engines. When they neared their operational revolutions, Moore focused the thrust and the massive craft and its pendent payload lifted off the pad.
As they rose, Moore rotated the engine nacelles to angle the thrust aft, and the shuttle picked up horizontal velocity to the east, out over the ocean, using the planet’s rotational velocity to decrease the speed to orbit.
The sky grew darker and darker blue as they continued to rise. At thirty thousand feet, MacKay began feeding oxygen to the engines as well as fuel, maintaining the thrust they needed to attain the high orbit required for the mission.
They had been out to the thirty-thousand-mile orbit several times before, with a test payload. They had to get that far out so as not to jeopardize the synchronous communication satellites that orbited at a bit over twenty-five thousand miles from Arcadia’s center of mass.
They weren’t trying to achieve orbit, however. They were aimed straight out to space, and continued to accelerate even as their altitude increased. The idea was to give the payload the maximum velocity they could with the shuttle before it continued accelerating using its own rockets.
“Approaching thirty thousand miles,” MacKay said.
Moore nodded.
“Roger that. Ready for maneuvering.”
“Thirty thousand miles.”
“Reduce thrust to zero,” Moore said.
MacKay cut the flow of oxygen and fuel to the engines, which continued to spin without anything to push against.
“Thrust at zero.”
“Releasing payload.”
Moore flipped the switch to disengage the shuttle’s load latches.
“Latch release confirmed,” MacKay said.
“Rotating engines.”
Moore rotated the engine nacelles so they were pointed ‘down’ from the shuttle cabin point of view.
“Engine rotation confirmed,” MacKay said.
“Bring up engines to five percent.”
MacKay started a greatly reduced oxygen and fuel flow back into the still-rotating engines. A small amount of gravity returned to the cabin as the shuttles separated vertically off the probe.
“Separation confirmed,” MacKay said.
Moore rotated the rear engine nacelles until they were pointed almost straight up, and the shuttle flipped over. As it came back around to be pointing back to Arcadia, he rotated both engines to point straight back, away from Arcadia.
“Bring engines up to full thrust,” Moore said.
MacKay increased the oxygen and fuel flow until the engines were at full thrust. The cabin gravity went to several gees of push back into the seats as the shuttle, now released of the heavy probe, accelerated much more rapidly than it had accelerated when loaded.
“Now all we have to do is burn off all this velocity so we can start home,” MacKay said.
“Yeah, but without the payload, that won’t take long.”
MacKay nodded.
“Do you think that thing’s gonna work?”
“No tellin’. It would be something if it did, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it would.”
“Telemetry indicates the shuttle has released the probe. The pilots report successful release. They’re on the way home.”
“Has the probe started its engines yet?” Borovsky asked.
“No, sir. We have ninety seconds yet on the five-minute safety margin to let the shuttle get away.”
Borovsky nodded. All according to plan so far. He looked to Huenemann, who sat impassively in the back of the control room, watching. Huenemann just nodded to him.
Over thirty thousand miles away, the computer’s timer ran out, and it began the rocket ignition process by starting the fuel and oxygen pumps. As before, it leaked primer fuel and oxygen out the engine nozzles, then ignited them. The rockets lit, and the computer increased fuel and oxygen flow. With that established, the computer focused the nozzles and went to maximum thrust.
“Sir, probe reports it is now at maximum thrust. All engines nominal.”
“Excellent,” Borovsky said. “Well, I guess now we sit and wait.”
Seventy-five minutes later, with the fuel and oxygen reserves at sixty percent, the computer shut down the rocket engines. The probe continued to separate from Arcadia at its new velocity. It would take four days to coast to the test location.
On this, Huenemann had followed the recommendations of the mathematicians. The probe needed to be well out of the gravitational well of the planet before attempting hyperspace transition. The planet’s gravity was a complicating factor in their calculations, and they just couldn’t tell for sure what would happen.
That made sense to Huenemann. One less thing to worry about. They could decide whether it was really a problem or not later. For a first attempt, make it simple.
“The probe reports shutdown of the engines, sir. The probe is at target velocity.”
“All right, then,” Borovsky said. “I guess that’s all the fun and games for today. Standby crew is on-shift. We’ll see everybody else on Tuesday.”
Huenemann came up from the rear of the room.
“Very nice. Excellent job, Mikhail.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Huenemann raised his voice to everyone in the room.
“Great job, everyone. We’ll see you all Tuesday.”
It was dark by the time Justin Moore and Gavin MacKay got back to land at Arcadia City Shuttleport. They put the big cargo shuttle down by the numbers.
After they shut the engine down and turned off the shuttle’s systems, MacKay turned to Moore.
“Now what do we do?”
“Take a long weekend, and be on call starting Tuesday. If and when that thing comes back, we’re
